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Fluent answers from AI search engines are more likely to be wrong

AI search engines like Microsoft's Bing Chat often fail to provide citations to back up statements, or cite information incorrectly - and this is more likely when answers sound more convincing

By Chris Stokel-Walker

27 April 2023

Bing Chat generates answers based on information from the internet

rarrarorro/Shutterstock

If you think search engines powered by artificial intelligence, such as Microsoft’s Bing Chat, are providing you with useful-sounding answers, it is more likely that they are wrong, researchers have found.

“In these current systems, accuracy is inversely correlated with perceived utility,” says Nelson Liu at Stanford University. “The things that look better end up being worse.”

Microsoft is just one of many companies offering AI-powered search tools, which generate results in digestible paragraphs that cite other websites rather than …

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